"Anahuac" becomes "New Spain." For

Michel de Certeau, the "discovery" and "conquest" are themselves a greater project of writing: "the conqueror will write the body of the other and trace there his own history.... This is writing that conquers. It will use the New World as if it were a blank, 'savage' page on which Western desire will be written" (1988 xxv). Here the sword is already a kind of pen, inscribing the